Live Blog: MTV Video Music Awards

Entertainment reporter

Relive our live coverage of all the goings on at the 30th MTV Video Music Awards, as Justin Timberlake stole the show with an *NSYNC reunion and big win, while Miley Cyrus disabused us all of any lingering Hannah Montana memories with a lingerie-clad writhing with Robin Thicke.

Disappointing finale. JT's weakest song/video in years winning the big award followed by a shiny but soulless performance of Katy Perry's feeble new single. Also, I have a lot of time for closing presenters Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Allison Williams but I thought MTV could get bigger names than that ...

1:25pm: Thank you all for reading and watching along with us today at the Justin Timberlake concert disguised as the MTV VMAs.

JT clearly stole the show, though shout outs to Gaga's multi-faceted opening and the dedication to the theme of gay rights that saw Macklemore & Ryan Lewis win an award for Same Love as well as getting a performance with topical intro.

1:21pm: To wrap things up there is a full boxing ring set up as a stage underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, with Katy Perry sitting in one corner singing Eye of the Tiger ... no not really, though it's a lyric, she's singing Roar.

Kind of wish she was singing that, though Roar is going well too.

Katy is dressed in silk boxer shorts and a tiger stripe sports bra and is surrounded by backing dancers dressed as sparring boxers.

In the refrain she takes to the jump rope to get in a little skipping.

1:10pm: As Bruno finishes we get footage of a "boxer" walking through the crowd with trainers and "Lioness" emblazoned across the back. It is presumably Katy Perry (or meant to be) who is about to sing "Roar, her biggest hit ever, for the first time ever" according to the voice of MTV.

Now, I know what the voice means, but really, that's just some clunky scripting.

I never thought I'd hear (half of) NYC hipsters Vampire Weekend sing a line from a One Direction song. Especially when they should have been singing from far superior "songs of the summer" Blurred Lines or Get Lucky anyway.

12:49pm: That's more like it, he walks to through the crowd (including an incredibly bored looking Rihanna) to jump on stage and sing Started From the Bottom - the clean version - which sounds a lot like this:

12:37pm: As Macklemore and Ryan Lewis take to the stage to sing "I can't change" from Same Love, following a good moment of talking about gay rights, I'm wondering what the best part of JT's performance was, so I'll ask you.

12:18pm: That concludes a MAMMOTH set from JT who has been going well over twenty minutes, and the applause may last just as long ... or would if Jimmy Fallon didn't try and calm them down, with limited success.

The crowd are screaming, and Fallon tells us if we "could feel the audience they are a loud" which is an odd turn of phrase.

Jimmy is presenting the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and points out that while he could say a lot, it's obvious why he's getting it.

He then goes on to say a lot about why he deserves it.

"I'm talking NSYNC, I'm talking solo albums, I'm talking hit after hit after hit, I'm talking Sexy Back, I'm talking Cry Me A River ... that song was about me by the way."

12:16pm: JT leaves NSYNC to kick off a performance of Suit & Tie from the new album, which is only fair, but still the crowd gets a bit quieter.

That transitions into Mirrors and Taylor Swift is singing every word of it in the crowd while One Direction ... well they still look like they have no idea who this guy pretending to be as big as they are is.

An Aussie producer, who will probably wish to remain unnamed (I can't confirm right now, he's living the showbiz life in LA these days), met an unmasked Guy-Man de Homem-Christo from Daft Punk at their Perth Nevereverland show in 2007.

Two interesting things:

1) He said de Homem-Christo "looked like a Hobbit".

2) He reckons he saw de Homem-Christo minutes before he took the stage in full robot gear ... and neither of them were that close to the stage at the time.

MTV Video Music Awards 2013

That DJ in between acts/ads is DJ Cassidy, who seems to have filled in the late DJ AM's role as DJ-to-the-stars.

I'm not entirely sure how he got so famous or well connected but his coming debut album sounds impressive.

Jessie J told me on Friday that her coming duet with Robin Thicke (just on screen with Miley Cyrus), Calling All Hearts, will be on Cassidy's debut: "[Producer] Claude Kelly played it to me, he was like, 'my friend DJ Cassidy's got this album and I wrote this song and I think you'd be amazing singing it'. He knows how funny I am about recording songs I don't write but I listened to it and I was like, oooh! It's such a tune – it's like throwback soul. Earth Wind and Fire are playing on the track ... it's like one of my dreams, y'know? Some of the names on the album I won't disclose, I don't know if it's a secret or not but it's ridiculous [how impressive some of those names are]."

11:18am: Miley is dressed in lingerie, which has to be called a teddy as it's (a) a teddy and (b) has a face of a bear on her belly whose ears are ... well let's just say they're located above his smiling face.

Rising Kiwi star Lorde was appalled by the sentiment of Selena Gomez's Come & Get It. Lorde told me: "I love it musically, I think it's awesome but ... just like lyrically it's so stupid - basically, 'boy, I'm sitting here waiting, when you're ready, come and get it'. You've got teenage girls singing along to that! Young girls who think that that is right ..."

10:42amPeter Vincent: Provocative Sydney-born rapper Iggy Azalea is among the nominees for Monday's MTV Video Music Awards, a ceremony that has produced some of the most bizarre moments in the history of televised awards.

In 2007, Britney Spears' performance of Gimme More led many to think she was intoxicated; in 2008, host Russell Brand called then-president George Bush "a retarded cowboy"; and in 2009, Kanye West was booed after grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech.

Over the years, several musicians, some from the same band (Poison, in 1991), have come to blows during the awards. Madonna has grabbed the headlines several times for her antics, including kissing Spears in 2003.

Bizarre and revealing outfits have long been a feature of the awards. In 2010, Lady Gaga famously wore a dress made of raw meat; in 1999, Lil' Kim's dress deliberately exposed her right breast (with covered nipple); and in 2000, Spears wore a flesh-coloured outfit, leading many to think she was naked.

The hot tip for today's ceremony, according to the New York Post, is that Justin Timberlake will reunite his former boy band 'N Sync for a medley of hits. 'N Sync broke up in 2002.

Australian Iggy Azalea, 23, a model for Levis who raps explicit songs in a southern US accent, is in contention in the Artist to Watch category, for her song Work. Her nomination is acknowledgement of her rapid rise to the forefront of an ultra-competitive sub-genre of aggressive hip hop popular in the US which is populated by brash female MCs (or "femcees"). Her contemporaries include Nicky Minaj, Azealia Banks and Princess Superstar.

Azalea is up against 17-year old tween idol Austin Mahone, electonica duo Twenty One Pilots, the enormously talented Canadian singer/producer The Weeknd and house music producer Zedd.

Azalea was born Amethyst Amelia Kelly and grew up in Mullumbimby, in northern NSW. She moved to the US at 16 and self-financed her early releases, one of which, Pu$$y, got her widely noticed. Last year she became the first non-American female rapper to be included on XXL magazine's influential annual Top 10 Freshmen cover feature. Previous freshmen have included Kendrick Lamar, Macklemore and Lupe Fiasco.

Azalea, who has just released her debut album, The New Classic, has a rapidly growing fanbase of "Azaleans" in the US and UK, where she has played several summer festivals including Glastonbury - although cancelled appearances at the Leeds and Reading music festivals to be in New York for the VMAs.

The major award at the VMAs is Video of the Year, which has no clear favourite in 2013. Among the nominees are Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's Thrift Shop, Justin Timberlake's Mirrors and Taylor Swift's I Knew You Were Trouble.

Timberlake and Thicke are expected to fight out the Best Male Video, and either Swift or Rihanna should win the Best Female category, with Pink and Miley Cyrus also in contention. One Direction is favoured to beat Cyrus to the Best Song of the Summer award.

There are also awards for Best Rock Video, Best Collaboration and Best Video with a Social Message. That award sees Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's chart-topping same-sex marriage anthem, Same Love, up against a song Beyonce wrote for World Humanitarian Day, I Was Here, and performed at the United Nations, as well as songs by Kelly Clarkson, Snoop Lion and Miguel.

The VMAs are decided by public votes on the MTV website.

The MTV Video Music Awards pre-show begins at 10am AEST and the awards ceremony starts at 11am. Giles Hardie will be live blogging from 11am and live coverage will also be on MTV.

I was searching for Iggy Azalea at the VMA's and found your post, I just wanted to let you know that this is one of the most hilarious & honest live posts of the VMA's I've seen. Congrats and thanks for the laughs